


A Composite Whole

by silver_penny



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean's ring IS Mary's wedding ring, Engagement, F/M, Finale What Finale, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Rebuilding, Season/Series 16, Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), Wedding, You have no idea how happy I am to finally get to use that tag., both of which happen and neither of which are the point, written for the Saileen wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 17:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_penny/pseuds/silver_penny
Summary: They’ve won, and they’re together, and everything’s over, and sometimes Sam can still feel the walls closing in over his head.“The problem with the bunker is that it’s a bunker,” he says to Dean on their way back from Idaho. “It’s underground, it’s heavily fortified, there’s an alarming number of esoteric weapons. Frankly it’s just…overkill.”“Alright, so what do you want?” Dean asks, impatient. “You want to go back to motel-hopping?”Sam shakes his head in dismissal. “No,” he says. “I don’t know, man. I miss Bobby’s.”The Merriam-Webster definition of "to build" isto form by ordering and uniting materials by gradual means into a composite whole.Written for the 2021 Saileen Wedding.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester (background), Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	A Composite Whole

**Author's Note:**

> I really love the concept behind these big fandom-organized collective events, but the wedding parties have all been just that side of too sappy for my taste. So I thought I’d write something for the Saileen wedding that was a little more low-key and also did everything I want fix-it fic to do. (Fair warning: this is equally sappy, just in a different way.)

They fall into the bunker giggling and shoving at each other, and Sam can feel his heart pounding steady with joy. Eileen jumps at him, twisting her fingers forward in a loose mockery of the ghost they’d just fought, and they lose it again, until Sam has to sink down on the floor and gasp in deep breaths of air. Eileen is wiping the tears from her eyes when she offers him a hand, and he levers himself up against her, running his fingers across the band on the inside of her finger before letting go.

“We’re engaged!” Eileen had yelled out last week, two steps inside the door, and Sam had been treated to a Dean shocked speechless and choking on his sandwich. Cas had congratulated them while Dean glared daggers over his head into the side of Sam’s, even as he congratulated Eileen; he’d dragged him away at the first possible moment, demanding to know why now and why Sam hadn’t told him. “Maybe because of this?” Sam had said. “Calm down, jerk, she asked me. Not the other way around.”

Dean had backed off, blinked, and then flipped into the biggest grin Sam had seen in a while. “Upstaged by your own girl, Sammy!” he’d crowed. “Better get used to that!”

He and Eileen walk hand-in-hand through the library and the kitchens, but they only find Jack, fixed in place over a little screen and slamming away at the controllers in his hands. He offers them a cheerful greeting and they wave back, before retreating back into the bunker to clean off their weapons and change clothes. At dinner that night they regale the table with a play-by-play of the hunt, complete with special effects and sweepingly dramatic recreations, and Jack laughs and laughs and laughs while Dean tries to hide his grin behind his fork.

Afterwards, everyone wanders off and Sam hovers by the island while Dean bangs around in the kitchen, putting everything back into place.

“ _What_ , Sam,” he finally snaps, spinning around and eyeing him suspiciously.

“Uh, nothing?” Sam says, caught off guard. He’s just standing there.

“You’re just standing there,” Dean says. “I can see the steam coming out of your ears from over here.”

He opens his mouth to say _nothing_ again, but instead what comes out is “Have you ever thought about leaving the bunker?” Dean freezes and Sam wishes he could kick himself.

“Is this about you and Eileen?” Dean asks. Sam is watching him cautiously and Dean won’t meet his eyes, instead staring straight over his shoulder at the wall behind him. His voice is carefully even, and Sam tries not to wince.

“No, not that,” he says. “Just, you know…sometimes I miss windows. And background noises.” Dean still won’t look him in the eye. “Jack’s school is also…kind of terrible,” he adds.

“I don’t know why it’s bothering you now,” Dean says. He’s got both hands down on the island, but at least he’s actually looking at Sam. “I thought you liked having the Hogwarts library down there.”

“I do!” Sam says, “It's great, it's great, but we don’t _need_ it. How many times are you going to reference _The Night-Time Habits of Brownies on the Eastern Seaboard_ in your life?”

“Well maybe we’ll hunt some brownies next!” Dean throws his arms out and nods decisively, and then turns back to his kitchen.

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam says. They’re not going to end the conversation like that.

“ _Sam_ ,” Dean says. Sam gives up and walks out.

Five days later he and Dean are driving back to Kansas from Idaho, of all places, when the radio hits an empty patch of white noise and Sam says, “The problem with the bunker is that it’s a _bunker_.” Sam has been thinking about this for days, and he thinks he’s finally got it figured out enough to put it into words.

“Oh, great job Sherlock,” Dean says. “Figured out the Men of Letters part yet?”

Sam ignores him. “It’s a bunker,” he repeats. “It’s underground, it’s heavily fortified, and there’s an alarming number of esoteric weapons that don’t have any clear trigger or barrel. Frankly, we’re just lucky Jack’s a good kid. And it was helpful when we were in the middle of all those cosmic battles, but we won. Now it’s just…overkill.”

“Overkill’s never been a bad thing in our line of work,” Dean says. “Better safe than sorry, right?”

The sun is filtering hot through the windshield, and Sam sighs and shifts to the side, notching his hands on his knees and turning them over in the sunlight.

“Between me and Cas, we’re perfectly capable of warding up whatever we’d like,” Sam says. “With the added bonus of knowing what the wards are.”

“Alright, so what do you want?” Dean asks, impatient. Sam cannot figure out how to have this conversation without winding him up. “You want to go back to motel-hopping?”

“No,” Sam says dismissively. “Of course not. I just miss – ah, man, I don’t know what it is.” He’d thought through the problem, not the solution. “I miss Bobby’s,” he finally says.

When Sam glances over, he can tell Dean’s taken aback. He blinks a few times and drums his fingers on the wheel, glancing left towards South Dakota.

“There’s nothing there anymore, Sammy,” Dean says.

“I know, I know,” he starts, rolling his eyes, “I didn’t mean –“ But Dean hasn’t stopped talking.

“I guess the land is still there,” he’s saying, “And it’s not like we can sell it, with who-knows-what buried in the scrapyard.”

Sam stares at him, keeping perfectly still, and Dean glances over and shrugs.

“We’ve done more with less,” he says. A few hours later, he turns left off the I-25 onto Route 26.

* * *

They drive up all the familiar roads and case the place, picking through overgrown vegetation and knocking down the remaining shell. Sam had thought it might be hard to go back, but it turns out it’s pretty difficult to be sad when you’ve got a sledgehammer and full license to smash anything you want.

When they roll back into Kansas two days later than planned, the bunker doesn’t quite feel like it’s closing up over his head anymore. Eileen catches his eye and raises an eyebrow in question, but he just shakes his head and starts mentally cataloguing the library, picking out what he wants to read now, what he’ll take to read later.

He and Dean get in touch with Jody and she gets in touch with some friends and they all call in some favors and pull some strings and next time they detour to South Dakota there’s a half dozen pallets of supplies in the yard. They keep it a secret from Cas and Jack and Eileen until the frame is up, neither of them really willing to believe in it yet, and then they pack up the car and make like they’re going to Jody’s. Cas catches on first, going completely still and staring at them from the backseat, but he doesn’t say anything about it.

Jack jumps out of the car nearly before it’s pulled to a stop, and he goes rocketing up to the frame they’ve built, running through the beams and yelling in delight. Cas trails in behind him, moving slowly, before he places a hand flat on the centermost column and turns back to them. He looks completely overwhelmed, and as soon as his eyes snap to Dean, Sam averts his own. Up from behind him, Eileen wraps her arms around his waist, and he leans back into her. Watching Dean pick his way up to the house, Sam pulls in a deep, bracing breath, and for the first time in a long time he thinks his lungs fill all the way up.

After a minute he turns around and looks at his fiancée.

“Probably should have asked you how you feel about moving to South Dakota,” he admits.

She shakes her head in regret, looking up at him seriously. “It’s a deal breaker,” she says. “I’m sorry, Samuel, but it’s just not going to work out. I promise it’s better this way.” He nearly chokes on his laughter and they walk hand-in-hand up to the house. When he freaks out a little bit a moment later and sneaks a look over to the side just to make sure she was joking, she catches his eye and whacks him on the arm.

In the house, Dean, Cas and Jack are crowded around Sam’s planning notebook, Cas backed nearly flush against Dean’s right side. He and Eileen come up behind them and Sam wraps his arms around Jack’s shoulders, looking over his head at the floor plan he’d sketched out weeks ago.

“Sam!” Jack says, craning his head backwards to look up at him. “Sam, I get my own room!”

“You already have your own room, buddy,” he says. He can feel the joy pouring off of his kid in waves, and he wants more than anything to just keep holding him tightly to his heart.

“Not in a house!” Jack says happily. “I’ve never lived in a house before.”

Sam looks up at Dean to find Dean already looking back at him, and standing there on either side of their little family, that’s the moment they really decide to go through with it.

* * *

With monster activity down and all the free time that comes with no longer having to save the world, the house goes up pretty quickly after that. They wrestle down the overzealous floor plan with real-world math and end up with five family bedrooms and a last reserved for any hunter who needs a place to stay. Dean had sketched out two rooms, one for Sam and another for Eileen, before she’d taken the pencil out of his hand and written her name over Sam’s on the diagram; Cas requests one for Claire, which takes its place. Dean sketches out a kitchen twice as large as Bobby’s had been; Sam gleefully takes a permanent marker to the panic room and turns it into a temperature-regulated library. They build an extension on the end as an armory, and fill the middle with sketches of couches and tables and television sets. Then they realize they forgot to add any bathrooms and have to do it all over again.

They take it to someone who actually knows how houses are built and he tells them what to tear down, what to rebuild, where to place things. Sam goes pacing around the perimeter at periodic intervals, warding it as strongly as he can against dangers from outside, and then against their own mistakes. One night, Cas comes up behind him with his blade flashing silver in the lamplight, carving long rows of symbols into the wood that make Sam’s head hurt if he looks at them for too long. They put hex bags in all the walls.

And they drive back and forth from Lebanon to Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls to Lebanon. There’s an AM radio station in Nebraska that plays nothing but German EDM, and Sam thinks he’s probably got their entire discography memorized by the time the roof goes up, without learning a lick of German. After all those trips, they ultimately don’t have much at the bunker they want to take with them, but Sam is still shocked by the amount of junk they’ve managed to accumulate. Every corner he turns, there’s another pile of things that require an executive decision. Eventually they decide screw it all, they can come back if they want to, and after that it’s easy to just grab what they need.

Their best hunting gear lives in the car anyway, but on top of that they pile a box for Cas and Jack, and one each for Dean and Sam, with the things Eileen had at the bunker stuffed into Sam’s box. Dean insists on his mattress before Cas tells him to just go buy another; then he pulls a couple dozen things out of the kitchen before he and Eileen go digging through the Men of Letters’ knives. As soon as every else has cleared out of the library, Sam and Cas look at each other and then they open all the hidden compartments they’ve found in the shelves, tossing thirteen of the most bizarre magic texts either of them has ever seen under a stack of herbology books in yet another box. Dean and Eileen come out with an assortment of wicked-looking blades, which go in on top of the herbology books. Jacks stuffs his backpack full and then carefully lays his Nintendo on top of the knives. Sam reaches in after him and puts it in the kitchen box instead.

Dean pulls the car around to the front entrance while Sam goes through one last time, shutting off the lights and making sure nothing volatile was left out. They meet at the top of the steps and Sam closes the door behind him. He listens closely when he turns the bunker key carefully in the lock, and now that he knows what’s coming, he can hear the rumble of the locking mechanism as it tumbles through the outer walls. Sam looks down at the key in his hand for a long moment, and then he hands it to Dean.

* * *

One day when they were building the house, with Cas and Jack and Eileen gone out to bring everyone back – well, ostensibly burgers, but with Cas and Eileen in charge it was anyone’s guess where they’d end up – and Sam and Dean fiddling around with the level but mostly waiting for lunch, Dean had turned to Sam and said, “You should give this to Eileen.”

He’d been holding out Mom’s ring.

Sam had stood there like an idiot, staring at the silver band and then staring up at Dean. “But,” he’d started, and then not known how to proceed. “But it’s yours,” he’d finally said.

“It was Mom’s,” Dean had said. “And you’re getting married.” When Sam hadn’t replied he had kept going, but Sam had heard his voice starting to falter. “I mean,” he’d said, “It’s traditional, right? Lady of the family and all that…”

“No,” Sam had said, and then backpedaled at the look on Dean’s face. “I mean yes, it is traditional. But I don’t want. I don’t.” He’d exhaled and changed tactics. “Eileen asked me to get her something she could use to punch a ghost in the face.”

Dean had looked startled, and then he’d laughed slightly too loudly, and then he’d pulled back. Sam had lunged forward, grabbed onto Dean’s arm. “Wait,” he’d said. “Hold up.”

Dean had held up.

“Okay,” Sam had said slowly. “You can remember, um. Mom and Dad. Together. I don’t. It means something to you that it doesn’t really mean to me. I don’t, um. I loved Dad. I don’t want to be the person who gives that ring to someone. That’s not what it means to me.”

Dean had blinked over at him, uncomprehending. “They were our _parents_ ,” he’d said.

“I know,” Sam had replied. “I know.”

And Dean had nodded and moved to put it away. He hadn’t understood then, but he had been willing to take Sam’s word for it and move on, and Sam had been suddenly and acutely grateful, and it had filled him up with the impetus to say what he actually wanted to say.

“Look,” he had started, trying to figure out how to put this into words. “That’s your ring.” But Dean had already been pulling back, had been about to crack a joke, about to disengage, so Sam had abandoned subtlety. “I think you should give the ring to Cas,” he’d said, and congratulated himself when Dean froze in his tracks.

“That’s not,” he’d sputtered. “we’re not –“

“I know,” Sam had said. He had not known. “I know. But I don’t think it matters, okay? Family doesn’t mean the same thing to you or Cas that it means to the rest of the world out there.” Dean hadn’t moved; he had been staring fixedly down at the concrete and Sam could see him breathing heavily under his jacket.

“Just think about it, okay?” he’d said, and then he’d reached over to pat Dean awkwardly on the shoulder. “I think Cas would be, um, incandescently happy,” he’d added quietly, and then swiftly moved over to the other side of the house. They’d eaten lunch in a tense, strained silence, with Jack chattering nonstop to fill up the dead space and neither of them able to look Cas or Eileen in the eyes. Dean hadn’t brought it up again.

When they pull into Bobby’s driveway for what’s hopefully the last time in a long time, there’s a deep spark of happiness kindling low in Sam’s chest. Even more so than the bunker, something about this place codes safety into his bones. He and Eileen race to the front door, and when she catches up to him, he leans down to scoop her up and carry her through the doorway. She pushes him away and jumps up on his back instead; he leans over to give them enough space as they go through, and she slams her palm into the top of the doorframe with a satisfying smack.

Jack gasps in delight from behind them and demands his own piggy-back ride, so Sam goes back out and carries him inside too, and then they laugh and shove each other back and forth over the threshold until Dean yells up is anyone going to help him get their junk or is he going to do it all himself for crying out loud. Sam shoos Jack back down to the driveway to help Dean and dances Eileen over the threshold again. They jump up and down and spin one another around in the empty room, and Sam thinks if Bobby could see this then he wouldn’t even mind what colors they’ve decided to paint the place.

* * *

It’s hard work getting everything up and in working order, and it doesn’t come with the immediate satisfaction they got from building the house, but eventually things start to settle into a regular schedule, and that brings with it its own kind of contentment. Sam installs a phone bank along the wall, and it’s all good and dandy until Claire comes sauntering in one day, asking what’s this about a bedroom, and at dinner she points out the phone bank and asks about that too. Sam explains.

“Okay, but,” she says. “it’s just old-school telephones?”

“They work just fine,” Sam says. So he’s a little bit on the defensive; sue him. This is his house.

“That’s kind of the bare minimum,” Claire says, unimpressed. “Can I text them? Can I ping them my location? Can they ping me back the location of the nearest safe house and the closest backup?”

“You can text us, Claire,” Cas interrupts. “whenever you need.”

She gives an awkward half-smile, but shakes her head. “That’s not the point,” she explains. “What if it’s not me?”

“Oh, are you just gonna shoot off a text when you get into trouble?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” she shoots back. “What do you want me to do, make a telephone call?”

They all stare at her, and then Sam stares at the telephone bank. It’s a very good telephone bank, but it’s possible they got caught up enough in recreating what they’d lost that they had forgotten about what they’d learned.

“Stay the night, Claire?” Sam asks. “You can help me set up a comms center.”

She stares across at him for a minute, and then nods. At the other end of the table Dean gets up to find some clean sheets and make up her bed.

It’s a few weeks later that Sam wanders downstairs in the middle of the night, unable to sleep and tired of trying not to wake Eileen. He’s more surprised than he should be to find Cas sitting at the kitchen table, clutching tightly to a bright red mug and staring down into it. He doesn’t look up until Sam sits down across from him.

“How’re you doing, Cas?” he asks. Cas just shakes his head and goes back to studying his drink. Sam nods and leans back in his chair. It’s that kind of night.

But as he leans back something catches his eye and suddenly he’s glad that he’s already sitting down. Cas isn’t looking at his mug; Cas is looking at the flash of silver on his hand where it’s threaded through the handle. For a moment Sam is at a loss for words, and a distant part of his brain is in sympathy with Dean, when Eileen had burst into the bunker so many months ago. The rest of it is in screaming, unmitigated shock.

“Oh my gosh he actually did it,” Sam says, too loudly in the pre-dawn quiet.

Cas looks up, startled. “You knew?” he asks.

“No,” Sam says. “No, I mean, I talked to him about it. I didn’t actually know. I’m…kinda stunned he went through with it, to be honest. I mean. No offense.”

“None taken,” Cas says distantly. “It was a surprise to me, as well.”

For a while they just sit there and stare at the ring on Cas’ finger.

“So does this mean you’re, um,” Sam clears his throat. “What are you going to do next?”

“Whatever Dean wants,” Cas says decisively. No hesitation, no hanging back. Sometimes the intensity of whatever Cas and Dean have going on freaks Sam out a little bit.

“Alright,” Sam says, sitting up. “But what do _you_ want, Cas?” That finally tears Cas’ gaze back up, and he looks utterly puzzled when he meets Sam’s own. Sam raises an eyebrow. “Team Free Will,” he reminds him. “You’re allowed to want things.”

But Cas is already shaking his head. “No, Sam,” he says, “it’s not that. It’s –“ Here Cas takes a deep gulping breath and averts his gaze, his eyes sliding down to the table. When he looks up again, there’s so much love and thanks in his expression that Sam has to fight the urge to look away himself. “What you and your brother have done for me,” he says firmly. “That you built Jack and I _into your home_. That we are here. That you trust me to build up the wards and guard your safety. That Dean –“ And here his eyes flicker downwards before he looks back up and nods, satisfied. “This is all I want, Sam,” he says, “This is more than I’ve let myself hope for in a very long time.”

Sam swallows hard. “I think Dean would tell you to rustle up some better wishes,” he says.

It catches Cas off guard and he laughs, shaking his head. He doesn’t say anything, but Sam knows what he means: _What else is there to wish for?_ Yeah, he gets it.

“You’re happy, Cas?” he asks. Dean had disclosed the conditions of the Empty deal to him in a near-monotone, and Sam had felt then like he’d been punched in the stomach. He’s pretty sure he knows the answer, but still – it seems like an important question.

Cas smiles and his eyes crinkle up at the corners; Sam takes a moment to breathe in the humanity of it all, in the pre-dawn quiet with coffee and a kitchen table. “Yes, Sam,” he says patiently, and Sam suspects he’s been fielding that question a lot.

Sam nods and leans back in his chair, smiling. It’s just that kind of night.

* * *

He and Eileen get married not long after, in the little garden out the back of their new-old home. They invite everyone they know and show off the house, congregating in the back and visiting long into the night. He and Eileen are standing barefoot under the makeshift gazebo, trying not to fall into each other from exhaustion, when she says, “You know Dean pulled me aside beforehand?”

Sam makes a face. “No,” he says, “But I’m not surprised. Good or bad?”

She laughs – they’ve been laughing at everything, all night – and says, “Eh. Not really either.” She shifts forward a bit and yawns. He catches her elbows but she grins up at him and shakes him off. “He said,” she continues, “that he wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into.”

“Oh, come on!” Sam says, but Eileen keeps signing, so he pulls his hands back and waits for her to finish.

“He wanted to make sure we weren’t getting married because we won the big cosmic war, just because we’re free now. Said he didn’t want me to burn out, said he wouldn’t wish on me the things you two have been through.” Eileen smiles sadly up at him, reaching up briefly to lay her hand across his jaw.

“I’m sorry about him,” Sam says.

“Don’t be,” Eileen protests. “It was sweet of him, and he’s not wrong, really. I just think he – doesn’t have much hope.” She glances over and Sam follows her gaze: Dean and Cas are seated on the other side of the garden, leaning in towards one another, Dean gesturing wildly as he makes some point that they’re too far away to hear. He knows what Eileen means, but he’s not worried.

“I don't think hope is really the goal right now,” Sam says. “Hope is persistent and all, but it’s something for the future. It’s only going to come with safety, with a string of victories. If we’re happy now – hope can come later. We have time.” They have so much time.

After the last guests leave and Jack has copped a sleepover at Jody’s, they kick Dean and Cas out of the house too. “Kicked out of mine abode by my very own kin,” Dean says loudly, flinging himself back across the doorframe and glaring over at Sam. “And where are we supposed to go?”

“The bunker, you idiot,” Sam says. “Now scram.”

Dean looks over at Cas with wide eyes. “Can you hear something?” he asks. “I can only hear the whistle of the wind where I used to have a brother.”

Sam rolls his eyes so hard they hurt, but he follows Dean out to the car anyway. Dean’s leaning against it, looking at him hard, and Sam tries not to fidget in the driveway. But Dean just pulls him in and hugs him tight, and Sam shoves his forehead into Dean’s jacket and wonders how they ever got here. “Um,” he says when they pull apart, and then clears his throat and tries again. “Do you even have the key to the bunker?”

“Of course,” Dean says, rounding the car. “It’s in the trunk.” In the trunk, with the hunting tools. Of course. “You’ve got thirty-six hours,” he says, pointing a threatening finger across the hood. “And then we’ll be back.”

Sam nods and laughs a little more. All this time spooling out before them – but thirty-six hours seems like a good place to start.


End file.
